Ocala Real Estate Talk

Archive for October, 2011

Here in Ocala we have the lowest mediam home prices in Florida. We have foreclosures, estate sales and even great prices on traditional sales. I mostly work with buyers and I’ve seen 100′s of such homes.  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a big mistake to concentrate on just the price. Buyers don’t think enough about condition.

I think the big 4 are the age of the roof, the AC heat pump unit,  the flooring and the kitchen appliances. When looking at newer foreclosures I’d add landscaping to this list.

The roof. Standard shingles here last about 15 years. Some insurance companies won’t insure a house with a standard shingle roof over 15 years old. Architectural shingles are good for 20 years or so.  The heat of our summers give a roof a real beating.

The AC unit, which in most cases is a heat pump, is harder to judge. An AC guy told me that they can break in 5 years and I’ve seen them 20 years old.

Flooring is really taken for granted. To carpet an entire house, as can be the case in an estate sale or even a newer foreclosure, can cost as much as a roof. For some reason buyers who would walk away from a house with a bad roof will have no problem replacing flooring. Flooring prices vary a lot from builder quality carpet to tile and wood floors.

Kitchen appliances can be 20 years old in an estate sale and missing altogether in many foreclosures. Here again there is a big difference in price between builder quality and top of the line. I do think appliances are at the bottom of the list price wise though.

Landscaping is often totally absent in foreclosures. No shrubs or trees, dead sod in the front of the home and a back yard that never had grass in the first place because builders here for some reason give an amount of sod that won’t cover the whole yard. You don’t over seed a bad lawn here. You rip out the old sod and lay down new sod.  Mature trees and shrubs won’t add anything to an appraisal. However I owned a landscape company and I can tell you an extensive landscape job on the house in an empty field can cost as much as all the four items above combined! Curb appeal is what makes a house a home.

Am I trying to sell more expensive houses? No I just believe too many people are “Penny wise and pound foolish”. I’ve walked out of what at first appeared to be low priced homes and said to my buyers that they couldn’t buy that house cheap enough to make up for all the work it needed.

Ocala area home sales have been pretty steady since June, plus or minus 5%. Active listings have remained about the same since June after dropping around 1,000 units earlier this year. Foreclosures are down about 30% from early 2011. Short sales always seem to be about the same.

You can see all my market reports and compare them month to month yourself at Ocala Home Sales. I think you’ll see that we are at the bottom of the market.

Statistics used for this blog post are from the Ocala Marion County MLS and are deemed to be accurate at the time this blog was written but are not guaranteed. All information is time sensitive and subject to change without notice. Home sales are for Marion County only and do not include FSBO, homes sold by builders or by auction that were not  listed on the MLS, commercial properties or vacant land.

The cooler dryer weather arrived early this year. By cooler I mean the 80′s but that is cool by Ocala standards. A cold front came through over the week end and on Saturday, October 1st, I woke up to temperatures in the 50′s. The high on Saturday barely reached 80. As this week goes on we are expected to get back to normal for early October which is the high 80′s. By the end of this month temperatures during the day should be around 80. This is the beginning of the best time of year here in Ocala. I love the 80′s with no humidity. As a matter of fact the humidity is gone and won’t come back until late May. If you dread the winter months stop complaining and move to Ocala. Ocala has great weather and some of the lowest home prices in Florida.